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A beautiful remake of one of the best puzzle games ever made. While you don't technically need to have played Myst to play through this game, the story will be even more incomprehensible than it already is. That said, Riven took the foundation from Myst and really polished it, making sure the puzzles are integrated into the environment much moreso than in Myst. Do note that this is far from an easy game. In fact, some of the things asked of you will feel extreme from the perspective of a modern player but it is all possible without guides or moon logic. It's just difficult.

I will say that while most of the game is utterly gorgeous, I do still prefer the FMV characters to the awkward character graphics in this remake. They look significantly better than the Myst remake but they're still pretty janky overall.

A yes or no recommendation is tough for this one so let me clarify: If you are a hardcore FNAF fan and want to keep up with all the lore, then yeah, obviously I recommend Into the Pit. If you are a casual fan or even just looking to get into the franchise for the first time, Into the Pit is probably a skip for me.

First off, the graphics and sound design are incredible the whole way through. Major props to Mega Cat for what they accomplished here. However good you feel the trailer looks and sounds, the game lives up to that expectation. Unfortunately, the game has pretty intense performance issues (which may or may not be linked to using a controller based on patch notes?) but jump scares and animations still look great.

As for the gameplay itself, I again give them props for taking the franchise in a wholly new direction. Approaching the game as a 2D horror game in the vein of Clock Tower, The Coma, or Detention was a great idea. The trouble is that none of the puzzles or horror here are all that interesting and investigation is basically non-existent. Throughout the whole game, you are pretty explicitly told what you are supposed to do via objective clues. The few times these are vague are usually more frustrating than thought-provoking. That said, I imagine the younger target audience might find some of the time-travel elements entertaining. For me, I just had trouble not comparing it unfavorably to Day of the Tentacle.

The horror comes from Springtrap chasing you around places but it's hard to be scared of him since he's remarkably easy to avoid. Despite what the trailers show, he actually runs slower than you do and the game even is built around this, with one particular point in the game seemingly requiring you to just run around him to progress. Once you realize that you can just go around him at any point in time, he becomes entirely trivial and the game never becomes any more difficult. Even as more animatronics start showing up, they seem to just make noise alerting Springtrap, rather than posing any direct threat. The flashlight is also entirely useless, making resource management a non-issue. The flashlight flickers constantly while using it and each battery is used up in somewhere between 10-15 seconds. You can always see Springtrap's eyes, even in the dark, so I preferred just running through the dark rather than using the entirely unreliable flashlight.

I will say that there are moments of inspired gameplay here. Several of the nights, you have to get out of your house, with several options available from the start. As you use escape paths though, they become blocked off for future nights. This forces you to find new ways out each time. I loved this concept and honestly wish it was expanded on in the pizzaria. Instead, they seem to switch things up from night to night by just locking certain doors and opening others. You never know which are open or closed though without simple trial and error and there doesn't seem to be any actual logic behind it that I could determine. Despite hints at further areas to explore via a world map, the Pizzaria and your house are the only two places that ever require any level of exploration, with the other locations only serving to house NPCs to talk to and items to obtain.

The story of Into the Pit is an interesting beast in itself. As with all FNAF games, the plot is ultimately cryptic but it does offer more of a narrative than pretty much any other game in the series. Ozwald has a goal and works to complete that goal throughout the game. This is never left to interpretation and is pretty straightforward. What's less obvious is why any of this situation is happening. If you're playing to understand why there's a time traveling ball pit, why Springtrap is impersonating Ozwald's Dad, why nobody else sees Springtrap for what he is, well, just know those answers won't come easily. I won't say they aren't in the game, that's more for online theorists to figure out, but I certainly couldn't figure any of that out.

If you are a fan of FNAF and just want more FNAF content, I think you'll be happy with Into the Pit. It's different than other games in the franchise but trying something different is good, especially from this side-story made by a partner studio rather than Steel Wool. If you are hoping to finally get the answers to the franchise, you likely won't be finding them here. I can't honestly even tell you if this is canon to the main games or not even after seeing all the endings. If you aren't a FNAF fan though and just love 2D horror games, this might be a good introduction to the genre for kids but it won't be much more than that. The puzzles and difficulty are remarkably easy, even on the hardest difficult (there are only two), the story is simplistic, and the game is quite short (I finished the game and got all the endings in 4 hours and that was taking my time casually looking around for everything).

2 free levels that are really well made. The aquarium is quite large and the use of glass is unique and a cool touch. The submarine is a vehicle level but probably the largest one so far. Both of these are great examples of the kinds of levels I want to see more of and the fact that they are free makes this a no-brainer. I hope the paid DLCs start including more things like this.

This is a cool "Kids-First-Resident Evil" kind of game. All of the atmosphere, horror, and twisty plot elements are intact here and executed quite well but the gameplay is far easier than most games of this style. For those who have never played a survival horror game before or maybe aren't here for the stress that this genre can provide, this is the game for you. Pick the normal setting and you'll be good to go.

If you have EVER played one of these types of games before, I HIGHLY recommend playing on Hard mode. It will be much more in line with normal settings on other games you've played. Normal mode will restock your ammo any time you run out, making enemies and ammo completely trivial. Hard mode still isn't very difficult but the safety nets are gone.

On top of the main game, Crow Country comes stocked with a good amount of extras. Several secrets and optional bosses exist in the game and after you complete it, you can unlock more items for subsequent playthroughs. Crow County is also just perfectly designed for speedrunners so if you're looking to get into that, Crow Country is worth checking out, even if you've never speedran a game before. All in all, it's a great game with a great story and I'll be very excited for anything else these devs make.

Easily one of the best puzzle games of all time. If you enjoy games like The Witness or Animal Well and don't mind a bit of light horror thrown in, I cannot recommend this game enough. Be aware that while the horror elements are effective, and you can technically "die", it never requires dexterous movements or quick button presses to survive, even when it may seem like it does. This is a game anyone can play, so long as you can solve some pretty difficult but accessible brain teasers.

Just a fascinating puzzle/metroidvania game unlike anything else I've ever played. I recommend taking notes while playing though since the mapping system isn't fully sufficient and there is a lot that you'll want to remember/keep track of. It'd be awesome if an update just added a few more different stamp types but even if that never happens, I still fully recommend this game.

One of the most frustrating and illogical survival games I've played that takes place in a world where literally everything seems to be out to ruin your day for no particular reason.

Even learning Raft was frustrating as the game never tells you that you can only ever build off of your original raft. I imagine the initial playthrough of every Raft player involves the frantic gathering of resources by using a bizarre hook thing before they jump off the raft as they reach the first island. It's only a four square thing and once it starts getting attacked by a shark, the logical move is to get off. The raft then floats away and you are literally stuck with no option other than to restart. You'd think you could use your building hammer to build a new foundation but no, you can only ever attach foundation pieces to other foundation pieces, not build them from scratch.

As for some of the illogical elements, besides the ridiculously murderous wildlife that includes sharks, birds, boars, and anything else they could shove in the game, at the start, your character is able to make things like a water still and a grill but can't make a shovel. They can make a paddle that somehow seems less effective than if they just used one of the many planks they find in the water. The raft constantly floats onward despite all the floating materials just staying still. If you want to get off the raft to explore one of the many islands that pop up, you'd better build a disposable anchor (WTF is a disposable anchor and why would anyone ever build one?). Your character is apparently incapable of beaching a raft like a normal human being would, instead requiring a ridiculous item that nobody in their right mind would ever create. As if that weren't bad enough, the anchor requires stone to build. Stone which you cannot gather on land or from the floating debris, no. You have to get off the raft and swim underwater and harvest the stone from the sea floor. So the game doesn't want you to get off the raft without an anchor but in order to get an anchor, you have to get off the raft. Completely insane.

Defending yourself is also a slog. In my time with the game, I made it to an island filled with birds that picked up rocks and dropped them on me. My person capable of building a full raft hadn't researched how to build a bow and arrow yet so I didn't seem to have any ability to actually defend myself against this constant onslaught from crazed birds. Which brings me to the research table. I built this thing thinking it would allow me to research new craftable objects. I assume that's what it does but all it ever showed me was a bunch of greyed out items I couldn't build. It gave a list of materials next to these items but even if I gathered those materials, I still couldn't research the items. I stuck a blueprint I found in the blueprint slot and it said Researched. I still couldn't build the item on the blueprint so I'm left with no idea what this table actually does or how to use it.

I only spent a couple of hours with this game and rarely have I found a game so immediately obtuse and frustrating. The design seems to be completely at odds with itself, the logic is baffling, and there is no tutorial or anything to teach you the confusing and unnatural mechanics. I cannot imagine recommending Raft to anyone.

If you enjoyed Subnautica, you will almost certainly enjoy Below Zero too.

Returning to planet 4546b, Below Zero actually gives you a named character and a tangible quest this time around. You play as Robin Ayou who intentionally lands on the planet to discover what happened to her sister, a scientist with Alterra. Your goal is not only to survive and escape this planet but also to piece together what was going on in this arctic region of the planet.

While the bulk of the gameplay is the same, some small changes make a major difference to the gameplay. The first and biggest change is the temperature gauge and the expanded role of land exploration. Unlike Subnautica's tropical region, Below Zero takes place in the arctic and, thus, is very cold. During your adventure, you'll spend a decent amount of time walking around on land and will have to maintain your temperature. Get too cold and you'll die. This functions just like any of your other survival gauges and oddly doesn't have any impact when you're in the water.

The smaller environment also means there are different vehicles. The Prawn Suit makes a comeback but the Seamoth and Cyclops are replaced by the Seatruck and Snowfox, the former being a modular vehicle capable of towing various expansions in back, such as extra storage or sleeping bunks. The later is a skiff made for going across the surface quickly.

Finally, some base elements function differently than they did in the original. The coffee machine is no longer a free water generator, instead lowering your thirst but giving a large boost to body heat. Base objects can now be built on land though, allowing for land bases.

The overall feeling of the game is the same although some of these changes may appeal to some while others may be put off by them. The story involves a good deal less investigation on the player's part with most plot points being actively pointed out to the player, but the story that was told was good and ties off many of the loose threads from the first game. Survival is made a bit harder due to not having the infinite combo of vending machine/coffee machine but this winds up working better for the game overall. Bladderfish are everywhere so water isn't particularly hard to get hold of and a greater emphasis on gardening makes planting an important part of sustainability. I liked making a greenhouse in my base and enjoying the much faster boost to my thirst and hunger.

To me though, the increased focus on land travel was not an improvement. The arctic environments were confusing and, while the artists did an admirable job at creating landmarks and unique areas, it's still just a snowy, icy waste for the most part. At no point did I venture onto land unless I had something specific I had to do and even that was done under duress. The Snowfox also felt superfluous since I wasn't able to make one until after I had the Prawn Suit and that would keep me warm on land plus add extra storage so I always just used that instead.

The smaller water environments also made it so that I never felt much of a need for more than a single, centralized base. Only in specific areas will sea creatures attack so building away from them will ensure you always have a safe place to go back. Caves are typically small entrances on the sea-floor and the deepest is only two levels down so treks could easily be made in at most, a couple real-world minutes, meaning I never felt like going through the effort of transporting materials and building bases throughout the world like I did in Subnautica.

This all makes the game feel quite a bit smaller than the first but for some, I imagine that will be a positive. Overall, I still deeply enjoyed Subnautica Below Zero and felt a pang of loss before ending the game, knowing I wouldn't ever go back to this base again. The story may have closed off most, if not all, of its story threads but I still hope that Unknown Worlds returns to this series again, if not on 4546b, then somewhere else in the galaxy. There's always room for more water planets, isn't there?

TL;DR Combat systems are confusing but the game is well worth your time and money, especially if you miss the Suikoden games.

For those looking for more of what Suikoden once offered, I recommend trying Eiyuden Chronicle but this comes with some pretty big caveats.

Firstly, if you were a fan of Suikoden, you'll feel immediately at home here. As it comes from several of the original creators, you likely won't be surprised that they nailed the feeling of building up a base, recruiting people from across the world, and getting to know all your many, many companions. The political storyline may be somewhat simple but it is still engrossing and the characters drive things forward, even when the overall plot may feel cliche to long-time fans.

Eiyuden Chronicle is also just a gorgeous game. The environments are varied and well detailed with the pixel art character sprites just bursting with characterization. Each recruitable character feels so distinct, an impressive accomplishment considering there are 120 of them and they ride on the back of a franchise with literally hundreds of characters in its time. The music is lively, although a bit more variety in the battle music would have been appreciated. What's there is solid but over the long runtime of the game, you may get sick of the one battle theme for all basic battles. I was already mindlessly humming it to myself after only a couple of hours.

The adherence to what came before is also Eiyuden Chronicle's biggest detriment too though. There are many quality of life improvements to the game, such as allowing plot-required characters to accompany you as non-combatants so you can use the fighting party you like rather than one required of you, but many things that were arguably problems have not been changed. Just like the Suikoden games, Eiyuden Chronicle comes with an extremely long prologue that leads up to the content most people came for. Looking forward to free recruitment and castle building? Expect it to take at least 10 hours to get there.

The primary problem though is the battle systems and how poorly explained (and possibly balanced) they all are. Your standard battles are similar to most JRPGs but you have 6 characters, more than in most games but standard in Suikoden. Battles are turn-based affairs where you choose all of your character's moves at the beginning of each turn and then the full turn plays out based on a visible turn order at the top of the screen. In the early game, characters don't really get any abilities beyond their basic attack, a defensive ability, and a special attack that doesn't feel very special early on. In the first 10 hours, I only had 1 party member that could reasonably use magic spells but the extremely small MP pool meant that after only about 8 heals, she was tapped out until I went back to stay at an inn. Remember you have 6 characters in battle so 8 heals means barely more than 1 healing spell per person and even at this point, 1 basic healing spell didn't even cover half of their HP.

Even later on, magic isn't a reliable option in the fairly long dungeons and boss battles the game throws at you. The 2nd dungeon of the game has 5 save locations spread out across its large maps and the boss battle took my average leveled party over half an hour to beat it. Needless to say, my mage was spent barely 3 rounds into the boss battle and I had to rely on items for the rest of it.

Perhaps the game simply requires more preparation or strategy than I was employing but that's where the obtuseness of the games' systems comes in. Despite having a dedicated Help section of the menu, Eiyuden Chronicle explains almost nothing about its many integrated systems. Each character comes with 8 stats and not once are these stats ever explained. Most are fairly obvious (Power = Physical damage, Magic = magic damage) but some, like Dexterity, could have many different possibilities, such as accuracy, dodge rate, damage with long range weapons, etc. In fact, some of the stats that seem obvious actually aren't as obvious as you may think. Above, I mentioned that Magic relates to your magic damage. You would reasonably assume this means that it impacts the damage caused by magic spells but that's actually wrong. From what the community has determined, spells don't scale with your level. Instead, this stat only has an effect on characters who have an elemental affinity as their basic attack. Things like this should be explained somewhere in the game but it just isn't and it's left to trial and error to figure out what the different systems mean.

On the other hand, some of the Help articles can make the system even more confusing. Early on, you're told that each character has magical affinities so give characters runes that fit their affinity. Not only are you given this information long before you're likely even able to change out anyone's runes, but you aren't ever actually told what any characters' affinity even is. In fact, affinities are hidden so you have to just experiment with different rune configurations for each character to figure these out. This feels so needlessly complicated when they could have just told you up front.

Lastly regarding the main battle system, the balance seems to pendulum wildly in a number of ways. With your 6-person party, you can put 3 characters in the front row and 3 in the back. Each character has a stated range so make sure your close range party members are up front and the long range characters are in the back. Seems simple, right? Unfortunately, the vast majority of characters are mid-range characters and can go anywhere. This may seem freeing but it means that new players who are still learning those hidden stats won't have any training wheels to learn where different characters ought to go.

Still, most will likely assume that your tankiest characters should go up front while the squishy ranged fighters and mages should go in the back so they don't get hit. This is how most games handle things but Eiyuden Chronicle has nearly every enemy able to hit the front or back row as often as they'd like. In every dungeon I've played, my front line fighters are typically fine while my back row rangers die frequently. It would be one thing if the game threw curveballs like this occasionally but this seems to happen everywhere. In fact, one of the most common enemy attacks has the enemy charge through your column, hitting your front and back fighter equally.

The TL;DR with all of this is that the standard combat system seems to assume you have extensive knowledge of JRPGs but also it assumes that you just know about the various nuances unique to its system that it never wants to tell you.

The War and One-On-One systems aren't much better. The only War tutorial you get is how to move units and that stronger units will beat weaker units. How can you tell who's stronger or weaker? I suppose you just guess? One-On-One seems to be a rock-paper-scissors match similar to the Suikoden games except I would find myself taking damage even when I was correctly guessing the opponent's moves. I'd counter his attack and only my health would drop so I'm not confident I understand that system either.

I realize this has been something of a deep dive in the nuance of these systems and it may sound like I'm bashing on the game but I really do recommend it. While my lack of understanding of the systems was frustrating, I was still able to regularly progress through the game and building up your base/recruiting characters is just as much fun as it has ever been. It's unlikely that Suikoden is ever coming back but Eiyuden Chronicle is picking up the mantle and running with it. I simply hope that in a possible sequel, a little more care is shown to these various systems and players are given the information they actually need in order to not feel like they're simply progressing based on luck.

A great narrative-based survival game similar to Subnautica or The Forest but with a backyard, Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Kids theme to it. If you've played one of these games, you know what to expect. Quests guide you through the story while you are encouraged to build up an ever expanding base to give yourself greater mobility and crafting opportunities. Crafting uses materials found from across the yard with higher tier items coming from further and more dangerous areas. The game can be played solo or in multiplayer although I only played it solo and it was mostly fine this way. I rarely felt like the game was stacked against me in such a way that demanded teammates.

If you enjoy that kind of game and are okay with a few flaws, Grounded won't disappoint. The theming is great and the environments are cool to explore. I will say though that the game felt a bit too railroaded at times. Obviously, this is an open environment and you can technically go wherever you want but I would often find that I would wind up exploring in environments that had numerous objects I couldn't access without higher tier items or they would have bugs that would absolutely destroy me with my current gear. When this happened, I would often be faced with a choice to either wander around more or less aimlessly until I found what I needed or consult a guide. I often chose the latter and while I never regretted this choice, I wish the game hadn't pushed me in that direction quite so often.

Part of the reason for this is that certain areas all but require certain objects to explore, such as the BBQ needing some level of sizzle protection to not get killed outright. All too often, these objects can only be obtained at one, specific place, such as the Sandbox in the case of the sizzle protection. To my knowledge, there is no way to get any protection against the heat anywhere other than the Sandbox, despite there being at least 5 different items that grant this protection I can think of off the top of my head. You also will quickly find crafting materials that require you to have a certain tier of tool, such as a tier 2 axe or a tier 3 hammer. There is only one type of each of these tools so if you find yourself in a situation where a story quest requires you to have a tier 3 hammer and you haven't found the items, or even the recipe, to make this hammer yet? Well, I hope you enjoy wandering around aimlessly searching for what you missed or consulting a wiki. There's also a mechanic where many recipes are locked behind finding special cartridges for an NPC. Some are required but some are optional and all of them can be technically found at any time, without any weight given to their order of importance. However, some recipes are absolutely vital to continuing and if you divert your focus from collecting these chips, you may not know why you can't build something you need to continue forward. These challenges can make the game honestly just harder than it needed to be. I'd find myself dying frequently because I was missing recipes I didn't even realize were available to help me.

This is my only real complaint about Grounded but it's a significant one that made progression, both story and exploration, frustrating at multiple times during my 60 hours with the game. In the end, I wound up getting to the last quest but not finishing as I simply didn't want to put in the time I knew it would take to beef up my character and farm upgrades to fight the last boss. Overall, I recommend the game especially to those who enjoy narrative survival games. If you're on the fence though or if you simply haven't played a game like this before, I'd probably recommend Subnautica first.